Why parenting is a public health crisis, and what we can do about it: Our Best Life

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Raising kids today is so difficult that the U.S. surgeon general has issued an advisory on parents’ mental health, concluding that our American society must better support families.

“Raising children is sacred work,” Dr. Vivek Murthy writes in the advisory, meant to call Americans’ attention to an urgent public health issue. “It should matter to all of us. And the health and well-being of those who are caring for our children should matter to us as well.”

More than 40% of parents say that most days they are so stressed they cannot function, compared to 20% of other adults, according to the advisory. That’s in part because of technological and economic forces that leave parents feeling “exhausted, burned out, and perpetually behind.”

But the advisory is not directed to just moms, or just parents. The solution is not to practice “self-care” or to stop scrolling Instagram if it makes you feel bad. It’s not saying “Don’t have kids unless you can handle the stress and afford the expense.”

The surgeon general acknowledges that our society needs children in order to survive. And it argues that society as a whole is responsible for helping them thrive.

Caring about kids, Murthy argues, translates into government policies and community programs that allow parents time off when kids are sick, make child care affordable and accessible, provide reliable mental health care and support social connection.

Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer have been preaching the importance of affordable child care for a year and a half in our Rethinking Child Care series.

The child care crisis hurts everyone.

In Cuyahoga County, businesses lose $121 million annually from a workforce with lower productivity and shorter tenure because of child care issues, according to Early Matters NEO. Local, state and federal governments lose an annual $114 million in tax revenue.

Mental health problems caused by the stress of raising kids also has wideranging implications. Parents today are spending more time than ever before on primary child care, and they’re worried about everything from social media to gun violence, the leading cause of death for Americans age 1 to 19.

Their psychological struggles can significantly influence child health and development, increasing health care costs overall and reducing economic productivity, according to the health advisory.

So the stress of raising kids is all of our problem to solve.

“This is something that I think is long overdue, the recognition that this has significant consequences, that it’s more than just a parent and I’m stressed and I’m tired,” Cleveland Clinic psychologist Adam Borland said in a statement. “This is having real effects on individuals’ day-to-day functioning. It’s cumulative.”

The early years are the hardest, physically.

Waking up in the middle of the night for months on end, throwing on a robe to feed a baby in the dark, struggling to make it out of the house after the baby spit up on your blouse and blew out a diaper.

I went back to work when my son was 11 weeks old and I remember wondering, how on earth I would manage it all with only 24 hours in a day. I remember pumping at work, then picking up from a child care center to wash bottles and do it all again.

By the time I had my daughter, the tornado of a toddler was more difficult than the newborn. I remember morning commutes yelling F bombs in the safe quiet of my car.

Now, thankfully, the days are less demanding. I told a mom that recently as she pushed a little girl in a tricycle across the street, with another child on training wheels behind her. She looked flustered. My 11-year-old daughter was on a bike next to me. “It gets easier,” I promised.

But the problems get bigger, whether you’re worried about lunch room bullying or teenage drinking.

Every parenting stage has its own challenges. They always stump you. They often seem insurmountable. And they stress you out.

Thank God for good friends, to share carpool duties, a pitcher of margaritas and their own woes. Thank God for family, who fiercely love both you and your kids.

Community is paramount in parenting.

Darby Saxbe, an Ohio native and now California psychologist, wrote in the New York Times that parenting is much easier “when we enjoy the social trust born from shared investment in care.”

Saxbe advocates for the benefits of benign neglect, rather than effortful interactions — so that kids learn from the boring adult world around them and so that parents give themselves a break.

But even “underparenting” requires wider buy-in, so that kids can roam safely and freely.

“In a society that treated children as a public good, we would keep a collective eye on all our kids — which would free us of the need to hover over our own,” she writes.

The answer is not having grandparents help out more, regardless of what JD Vance says. (Lucky guy that his mother-in-law took a sabbatical to care for his baby for a year.) Most Americans don’t have that luxury.

Individual families cannot raise kids without society’s support, nor should they be expected to. That’s why we created public schools and social service agencies and healthcare.

We should do more to help families. It truly takes a village.